John Brennan & Mary Miskella

So now we come to the couple, John Brennan and Mary Miskella, who met and married and brought together our two ancestral families. As we tell their stories we remember them both with great affection and appreciation for the efforts they made to afford us all the opportunity to live and rear our families in a manner, that we trust in God, will be a credit to them for generations to come. 

They met we believe through an introduction by John’s sister Ellen. Father Patrick Doyle C.C., in the Church of the Immaculate Conception Wexford, married them on the 27th of June 1927. The wedding reception was held in the Miskella home in King Street, Wexford Town and the honeymoon began at Wexford Railway Station and after that the trail goes cold.

Mary went to the Presentation Convent School in Wexford and went on to work as a bookkeeper in the exclusively for ladies drapery store known as Whelan’s of the Bullring. She was 27 years of age when she got married.

Their first child Sean Philip was born in King Street Wexford on or about the 22nd of November 1928 but only lived for seven weeks and died on the 10th of January 1929. Mary Philomena was born in Blessington on the 9th of December 1929. Patrick Joseph was born in King Street on the 12th of March 1931. Philip James was born in King Street on the 22nd of July 1933. John Pious was born in Blessington on the 15th of March 1939.

Mary spent the rest of her life in Blessington where they lived in three different rented houses. She was a good-natured caring person and was well respected by the local people. She worked tirelessly in the interest of the Church, where she was a daily mass attendant. She provided altar cloths, flowers etc. for every occasion and making rosettes, bouquets and floral arrangements for weddings, processions and other events was her specialty. Mary was a keen gardener and an expert knitter supplying jumpers for all the family and particularly the matinee coats for the babies. Coming as she did from the home of the Rosslare Herring she was regarded by her neighbours as an expert on fish and made their selections for them from the weekly mobile fishmonger.

When her husband John died on the 11th of October 1948, at the early age of fifty-three, she opted to wear the old fashioned widows black and maintained that until she died in 1978. At one stage she was one of five Garda widows living in Blessington. These women from various parts of the country had all outlived their husbands.

Mary was born very close to the feast of the Immaculate Conception, and it was perhaps fitting that she would die, so suddenly, while on her way to Mass, on the 15th of August, the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady. She lies buried beside her husband John in Burgage Cemetery, Blessington Co. Wicklow. 

John William Brennan was born in Ballyboggan on the 20th of October 1895 and was the third child of John and Elizabeth. He went to school in Castlebridge and very fortunately we have a photo of him, in a school group taken in 1904 and another one on a school football team taken about 1910. He continued to play hurling and football for the parish teams into manhood and by his own admission, was good at both.

The Irish Volunteers were founded in 1913 and it appears he was associated with this movement for a period from 1917 to 1922. This involvement became a feature when he decided to join the new Irish Police Force, to be known as An Garda Siochana. His colleagues in the movement saw this force as an extension of the British run Constabulary and threatened to burn down his mother’s house if he persisted. However the intervention of the local Parish Priest, Father.J.Dunne convinced them that this was an Irish Police Force for the Irish people.

So on the 10th of August 1923, standing five feet nine and one quarter inches, John was appointed a member of the force and given the number 5021. Because of his new status he was held in high esteem by family and friends and one cousin described him as an icon in the parish. On the 22nd of January 1924 he was posted to the village of Donard Co. Wicklow, which is situated about five miles off the Blessington to Baltinglass road. Here too his footballing skills were appreciated and he played for the local team.

When he married Mary Miskella on the 27th of June 1927 he was re-posted to the town of Malahide in North County Dublin. They were unable to find suitable accommodation in Malahide so he was sent instead to Blessington and was there until his untimely death while still in active service on the 11th of October 1948.

Living in the first half of the last century as John did was totally different than living in the second half. He like most of his generation never owned a house, never owned or drove a motorcar; he did not have a radio and never even saw a television set. For all that they were content with what they had. He loved dogs and was never without one or more, especially the Irish Terriers that made hunting badgers, foxes and rabbits a constant source of enjoyment.

His career in the force was at all times strict and disciplined, the station was manned twenty four hours a day which meant that the Guards took turns sleeping there overnight, bringing their blankets with them. The crimes they dealt with were of a local nature and even then were many and varied. A look through his notebook for the period 1931-1941 gives a good insight into the going’s on of the time. Information on criminals wanted all over the country for various crimes. School attendance summonses, unlicensed dogs and guns, untaxed cars and lorries, stolen cars bicycles and motorcycles, stray farm animals and descriptions of missing persons.

One entry in the book really described how things were done at the time;

On Tuesday 27th of October 1931 in company with Guard Connolly, we held a bus trap in the town land of Burgage. An I.O.C. bus Z1665 passed through the trap a distance of 220 yards in fourteen and a half seconds. The driver of the bus was Clement Boyle. He escaped any penalty on this occasion but was summonsed on another date for having too many passengers on his bus.

Noxious weeds seemed to be a problem and several farmers were warned to have them removed. Distributing pension books and advising people to licence their guns and cars was all part of the job, also minding the Banks on the fair days which would entail carrying a loaded 45 Colt Revolver. John was the food and drugs officer and this involved taking samples of food and beverages from the local stores and sending them off to the State Analyst for testing. He was also the school attendance officer and in this respect he claimed he never issued a summons to any mother during his tenure.

However he may have done more harm than good for two women friends of the family. He never smoked himself but during the emergency when the craving for cigarettes was worsened by the fact that it was nigh impossible to get them, he would trail around the shops and get maybe ten here and ten there which would keep those two women from going insane. Nobody had ever heard of lung cancer. Then in 1941 the dreaded animal disease known as the Foot and Mouth hit the country. This imposed restrictions on the movement of farm animals or fodder and created some hilarious games of cat and mouse activity between the Guards and the farming community.

This period was well into the Second World War when rationing was introduced for fuel, food, and clothing. The Lord protects us from all harm but if that situation were to return today it might put a brake on the spending frenzy that has developed. Those were hard times and survival was the name of the game. Having just enough petrol to last for two days would have a sobering effect on us all. Buying a suit could mean darning and patching the rest of your clothes until the next lot of coupons arrived. If you got bread today, it might be next week before you got the butter and even next month before you got the jam.  There was no coal coming in to the country, oil fired heating had not been invented and if it was, there was no oil anyway. Gas was available in cities and some towns and was used for cooking only and it too was rationed. An Inspector known to all as the glimmer man could call at any time and if you were found to be using an appliance during the ration period, you could be sent to jail.    

All this imposed extra work on the Guards by way of surveillance and security and they were aided by two volunteer organisations, The Local Defence Force and The Local Security Force.

Another entry in John Brennan’s notebook is still classed by some as unforgivable (John Byrne was later to be the father-in-law of his son Philip Brennan);

On the 14th of July 1935, I found John Byrne, Baltiboys using an unlighted bicycle on the public street at 11-50pm with lighting up time 10-46pm.

Wartime scarcity of food and fuel was to cause these two men to cross tracks again, this time of a friendlier disposition. When John Byrne, because of the coming of the Blessington Lake, had to move lock stock and barrel from Baltiboys to Burgage he very kindly provided a drill in his potato field to facilitate the growing of Brennan’s potatoes. If this was to keep them from starving, he also provided the means to keep them from freezing, when he sent his horse and cart manned by his sons to bring home fire wood from the forestry. All that we have no doubt was very much appreciated by a man who was in failing health and who would have greatly enjoyed the eventual outcome of that friendship had he lived to see any of it.

We know that the young people of today would not recognise the Ireland of 50 years ago as the Country has been transformed both socially and economically. In 1949 there was one murder committed in Ireland, compared with about 50 a year now. Reflecting the deep conservatism of the time, births outside marriage were rare and cohabitation was almost non-existent. Deaths from infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and influenza were still common in the 1940’s and nearly half of all houses had no toilet.

As the story of three generations of our ancestral families draws to a close we wish to say that all the information recorded has been carefully researched and the names, dates, and places are as accurate as can possibly be. As usual we can say why did we not speak more to our elders when they were still with us and obtain more information on their parents and grandparents. Well the answer is simple, we were just not sufficiently interested at the time, and also the fact that children in older times were kept well out of the way and were never involved in their parents’ conversations.

Reflections on a Lost Father

The final chapter is being left to John and Mary’s youngest son, also John, and he has penned a moving description of his memories and appreciations of them; 

It was the Fair Day in Blessington, a very miserable, windy, wet day as I stood in the hallway of Hennessy’s house beside their pub and watched my father’s funeral slowly pass by. The coffin was draped in our National Flag and Gardai marched on either side of the Hearse. As it made its way through the cattle and sheep, on the way to Burgage Cemetery I got an uncontrollable urge to join my Mother in the car behind the Hearse. I was not meant to go to the funeral, as I was only nine years of age at the time. I was forever glad that I did. I saw the flag being removed from his coffin and I heard the Last Post being played by the Garda Band. I was very proud. I was also terribly sad and I cried.

My childhood up to then had been very happy. I remember small things, for instance, the tea chest that I spent my baby hood in and the back kitchen and the yard of the house beside the Horseshoe Arch in the main street of Blessington. I remember sawing logs with my brothers for firewood, on a contraption called “The Horse”, which was made up from the logs themselves.

Our house was situated between two butchers shops and this meant that we were on a rat trail as they moved from one to the other. My father had an ingenious rattrap that caught the rats live and with great excitement he would release them to test the killing instincts of his Jack Russell terriers.

The tea chest I mentioned was the original playpen. It was a wonderful safe haven for a small child, being animal and vermin proof. An old bicycle tyre, fitted as a rim around the top would prevent the child getting splinters and also become their own personal teething ring.

My Father and Mother were always present, she baking, knitting and mending, him working in the garden and making small wooden toys for us to play with. He suffered ill health for the time that I knew him, lung trouble, which he thought was asthma. It was an abscess on his lung and he eventually had an operation for it. He did not survive the operation.

My greatest regret is that my father did not live to old age, like our mother. She lived thirty years after him, often lonely. I feel that they would have been very happy together.  I would love to have had the opportunity to share more time with him and to enjoy his company especially in later life. Another regret for him was that he did not live to see any of his nineteen grandchildren nor indeed any of his twenty-three great grandchildren. I know he would have liked that and the children would like to have known him. I remember him as a tall, thin man who always wore a hat. He had a silver watch and chain on his waistcoat. It had an Irish scene engraved on the back and he would let me play with it. It is now my proudest possession and my only keepsake of him.

Going on Routine patrols he would bring me on the handlebar of his bicycle. He was a kind and popular man and was welcomed everywhere we went. I saw him killing cattle for the butchers, using an instrument known as a Poleaxe. This was the method used before the introduction of the more clinical Humane Killer.

He could have owned the farm in Wexford. I remember going with him to visit his Mother who was ninety years of age and still very able. She wanted him to come back and live there. He refused and suggested that she give it to his younger brother Tom. She never did but sold it to a neighbour instead for a very small payment. My father was greatly annoyed at this but as it turned out he died before her.

As a result of his untimely death, at the age of 53, I feel my childhood ended prematurely, my schooling ended early and I went to work for a local butcher. I joined An Garda Siochana myself at the first opportunity and followed in his footsteps.

He was typical of the first Gardai who after fighting the Black and Tans with the I.R.A., took over from the British run force, The Royal Irish Constabulary. They had to break down prejudice and fear among the people and forge a new respect for law and order. This country must be forever grateful to him and his comrades who brought peace and tranquillity back to our land, often at great personal risk to themselves.